In Renaissance Italy, betrothal and marriage were celebrated with a variety of events as well as commemorative works of art. Often elaborate, these objects marked the joining of a couple while symbolizing wealth and demonstrating alliances between powerful families. Particularly significant were cassoni, large storage chests produced in pairs and typically used to hold the bride’s dowry. In mid-fifteenth-century Florence, these chests were sometimes paraded through the city in wedding processions. As part of the domestic interior, the chests were designed to complement the other furnishings in the new couple’s bedchamber.

Cassoni in museum collections typically consist of painted panels from chests that were dismantled long ago. This exhibition includes two complete chests and related painted panels in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, all produced in Tuscany in the mid- to late-fifteenth century. The display considers the contexts for which marriage chests were made and used, techniques employed by craftsmen in producing them, and the sources and meanings of the decoration. Usually representing moral exemplars intended for the education of the married couple—particularly the wife—the tales and images that decorate cassoni provide insight into Renaissance Italian art, life, and society.